Sheridan Panorama

The Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest is the largest of the National Forests in Montana, United States. Covering 3.32 million acres (13,435 km²), the forest is broken into nine separate sections and stretches across eight counties in the southwestern area of the state. President Theodore Roosevelt named the two forests in 1908 and they were merged in 1996. The Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness is located in the Beaverhead portion of the forest. The Beaverhead section includes most of the Pioneer, Gravelly, and Sapphire Ranges. Both the Centennial and Bitterroot mountain ranges are also located here with the Continental divide found in the Bitterroot range. "Lemhi Pass, at elevation 7,323 feet (2,300 m) above sea level, is a rounded saddle in the Beaverhead Mountains of the Bitterroot Range, along the Continental Divide, between Montana and Idaho. Here, in 1805, the Lewis and Clark expedition first saw the headwaters of the Columbia River, which flow to the Pacific Ocean, and crossed what was then the western boundary of the United States." Lemhi Pass was the point at which the members of the expedition realized that there was not a waterway that would lead from east to west across the continent. Lemhi Pass was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960.